What Is In a Name?

The ultrasound was amazing. You were very active, giving us some great pictures, including one that we called “baby yoga” where you were folded over on yourself completely, knees to mouth.

The gal doing the ultrasound found you to be so photogenic, that after she had handed us the roll of about 30 pictures, she chuckled and said, smiling, “I took a lot a pictures, maybe you should hide that on your way out, haha!”. Then a brief pause and her smile lessened…”No, really, you should hide that on your way out.”

She calmed when we stuffed the roll of pictures in your mom’s purse.

We have a problem, though. You see, we had a boy’s name all picked out. If you were a boy, Vincent Kane Valdez would have been your name, “Vin” what you went by. But this news of the female variety has put us in a bit of a conundrum.

We don’t know what to name you.

Names are being thrown about every day, but we have yet to settle on anything. It’s not that your mom and I disagree on anything in particular, it’s just that every name we come up with is mediocre at best to one or both of us. We’ve gone everywhere from popular culture to ancient myths with names and have yet to settle on anything (I still like Calliope, but your mom says that all she hears is “can I go pee”).

But we’re not worried, we have plenty of time to figure this out. We’re looking in name books and whatnot, and we’ll find out your name soon.

You may come to a similar point in your life where you’re wondering who you are. There’s so much in the world right now that can help shape a young woman, and by the time you’ll be reading this, all of it will probably be coming at you a mile a minute from all sorts of media.

Sweetie, know that you’re in a similar place that your mom and I are in right now: you have plenty of time. So many kids (and adults) are in such a rush to settle into a persona that they often forget that there’s nothing wrong with not settling into anything for a while. Listen to different types of music, dress in different styles, try new hobbies, and settle into the things you enjoy, not what people think is “cool”. I tried to pretend to be “cool” for a few years. Ask me sometime to show you pictures of my “gangsta” phase in Jr. High. I think the word embarrassing fits the bill, here.

We don’t know what to name you yet, but we have plenty of time. You may not know what sort of person you’ll be right now, but you have plenty of time to figure things out as well. And then you have the rest of your life to shift that around, if you want. Just because so many others have conformed to fit into a certain mold, there’s no reason you can’t break the mold, or even start new ones.

I’m excited to meet you, my little girl, and to see who you grow to be.

Congratulations! I was the other way round: baby no 4 was a boy after 3 girls, and yet we only had girls names. But, like you say, no rush. Noodles (not his real name) even spent his first Christmas as ‘The Boy Who Shall Not Be Named’ (Voldermort for short?). People tried to sway us in our decision with the names written on the tags of his presents. I cried a lot. But I’m also glad we took our time. The name thing’s an important one to get right.